“Fans Trump Audiences”, Mary Meeker Tells Code Conference

Fans – those completely entranced people who tweet and share and talk about their favorite TV shows and films and books and whatever else they care intensely about – are increasingly far more valuable to networks and other content creators than just accreting big audiences, said Mary Meeker, the long-time Internet investment analyst. Meeker gave a brisk and broad-ranging rundown of major Internet trends as the opening speech at this year’s Code Conference, the rebranded confab in Palos Verdes, California for Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher’s new tech-news site Re/Code.

“Fans trump audiences,” Meeker said, crediting the observation to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who will speak tomorrow before the show closes. “An audience changes the channel when the show is over. A fan base shares, comments, creates content” when the show is done, magnifying the show’s reach and engagement with existing and potential new audiences. And the research suggests that, “when TV is combined with social interaction, there’s a nice lift for brand/purchase/advertiser recognition,” improving the impact of ads that accompany those shows.

That engagement with highly connected and passionate fans will become all the more important as more tablets and other smartphones are sold. Meeker trotted out stats showing that sales of such mobile devices are increasing at rates outstripping anything that happened in the rise of the personal computer. And about five in six people watching TV now also are using at least one other device at the same time. That will increase the efficiency of advertising, as more information is coming in at once for users.

Recent Comments

DVD sales are too far in the past to matter. This is an internet trends audience, and...

nostradamette

9 months

It all depends on what business model you're talking about. For subscription-based like Netflix and HBO, sure,...

HowardB

9 months

Of course. Networks depend upon advertising dollars to produce the high-budget shows that television audiences demand. They...

At the same time, all those mobile devices are also changing the way people find programming, as the old TV Guide and electronic programming guides are outstripped by search engines, particularly Google’s massive YouTube operation, and with dedicated apps from big media companies such as ESPN, HBO’s HBO Go and the BBC’s iPlayer. Meeker also called the rise of Google’s Chromecast and Amazon’s Fire, both cheap gizmos that allow people to take video content from the web and put it on a traditional screen, “game changers.”

7 Comments

Paul Barzman • on May 28, 2014 9:31 am

I always knew it wasn’t the shows that count, it’s the tubes of toothpaste they sell. Confirmation, people.

HowardB • on May 28, 2014 9:31 am

Of course. Networks depend upon advertising dollars to produce the high-budget shows that television audiences demand. They can’t rely on box office mojo, and DVD sales are too far into the future and unpredictable.

nostradamette • on May 28, 2014 9:31 am

DVD sales are too far in the past to matter. This is an internet trends audience, and Netflix is all about retaining subscribers. Ad viewing doesn’t exits on Netflix. That’s where building fandom matters. (Which ironically Netflix is terrible at, but maybe they’ll improve?)

Pondering • on May 28, 2014 9:31 am

Interesting. But I wonder if that really helps a traditional advertiser. I can see where it would greatly magnify the potential of a licensing deal or product placement, but outside of the Super Bowl, does anybody tweet #awesomecommercial?

But actually • on May 28, 2014 9:31 am

The point is that a ‘fanbase’ engages with the show. This advertises its appeal to other potential fans/audience members, bringing higher audiences.

More importantly, monitoring engagement with a show (e.g. who was tweeting ‘#sixseasonsandamovie’ when Community was cancelled) allows better understanding and targeting of advertising for particular demographics. There are plenty of other ways to exploit this too

It basically concerns the benefits of engagement with the show rather than than advert

SDM • on May 28, 2014 9:31 am

One of the reason I am rarely part of the “audience” anymore is because shows and networks cater to “fans.” I don’t need ten to fifteen percent of the screen taken up with Twitter and Facebook logos, nor do I need a crawl telling me what “fans” are tweeting. I want to suspend my disbelief (guess I’ve given myself away, I don’t watch un-reality shows) and immerse myself in the world created by the writer, the production folks and the actors. The same is true of life, I want to experience it – not take selfies of myself against a background of other people taking selfies of themselves.

Having said that, Ms. Meeker cares about creating wealth, not creating art – so what she says is valid from her point of view and for her clients.

nostradamette • on May 28, 2014 9:31 am

It all depends on what business model you’re talking about. For subscription-based like Netflix and HBO, sure, fans trump audiences because the name of the game is to retain the audience, and if they’re fans, that means they’re far less likely to defect. For ad-based network shows, defection doesn’t matter as much as eyeballs watching ads right now.

No wonder Reed Hastings loves fans, that’s his business. But is it ABC, CBS etc’s business? Not so sure. They’re still selling toothpaste and will be till the day they finally turn out the lights.